Recommendations based on "Queer, 2nd Edition: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens"

Based on your reading history, we think you will also enjoy the following books.

By Kristen Hileman

It has been more than fifty years since John Waters filmed his first short on the roof of his parents’ Baltimore home. Over the following decades, Waters has developed a reputation as an uncompromising cultural force not only in cinema, but also in visual art, writing, and performance. This major retrospective examines the artist’s influential career through more than 160 photographs, sculptures, soundworks, and videos he has made since the early 1990s. These works deploy Waters’s renegade humor to reveal the ways that mass media and celebrity embody cultural attitudes, moral codes, and shared tragedy.Waters has broadened our understanding of American individualism, particularly as it relates to queer identity, racial equality, and freedom of expression. In bringing “bad taste” to the walls of galleries and museums, he tugs at the curtain of exclusivity that can divide art from human experience. Waters freely manipulates an image bank of less-than-sacred, low-brow references—Elizabeth Taylor’s hairstyles, his own self-portraits, and pictures of individuals brought into the limelight through his films, including his counterculture muse Divine—to entice viewers to engage with his astute and provocative observations about society.This richly illustrated book explores themes including the artist’s childhood and identity; Pop culture and the movie business; Waters’s satirical take on the contemporary art world; and the transgressive power of images. The catalogue features essays by BMA Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Kristen Hileman; art historian and activist Jonathan David Katz; critic, curator, and artist Robert Storr; as well as an interview with Waters by photographer Wolfgang Tillmans.Published in association with the Baltimore Museum of Art.Exhibition dates:The Baltimore Museum of Art: October 7, 2018–January 6, 2019Wexner Center for the Arts: February 2–April 28, 2019

By Malinda Lo

Winner of the National Book AwardA New York Times Bestseller"The queer romance we’ve been waiting for.”—Ms. MagazineSeventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible.But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.(Cover image may vary.)

By Henry Hoke

Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. One of the Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2023. One of The New York Times' 10 Best California Books of 2023. Longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.“Open Throat is what fiction should be.” ―The New York Times Book ReviewA lonely, lovable, queer mountain lion narrates this star-making fever dream of a novel.A queer and dangerously hungry mountain lion lives in the drought-devastated land under the Hollywood sign. Lonely and fascinated by humanity’s foibles, the lion spends their days protecting a nearby homeless encampment, observing hikers complain about their trauma, and, in quiet moments, grappling with the complexities of their gender identity, memories of a vicious father, and the indignities of sentience.When a man-made fire engulfs the encampment, the lion is forced from the hills down into the city the hikers call “ellay.” As the lion confronts a carousel of temptations and threats, they take us on a tour that spans the cruel inequalities of Los Angeles and the toll of climate grief. But even when salvation finally seems within reach, they are forced to face down the ultimate question: Do they want to eat a person, or become one?Henry Hoke’s Open Throat is a marvel of storytelling, a universal journey through a wondrous and menacing world recounted by a lovable mountain lion. Feral and vulnerable, profound and playful, Open Throat is a star-making novel that brings the mythic to life.

By John Waters

Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich―and happily horrify readers everywhere.Role Models is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities―some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle-of-the-road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis―these are the extreme figures who helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness.Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time.

By Louise Rennison

Once more I am beyond the Valley of the Confused and treading lightly in the Universe of the Huge Red Bottom. What is the matter with me? I love the Sex God and he is my one and only, but try telling that to my lips. Georgia has finally put her red-bottomosity to rest and chosen Robbie the Sex God over Dave the Laugh. After all, with the Sex God she'll be a pop-star girlfriend and go on tour! Besides, Dave the Laugh is now dating her friend Ellen (although that didn't stop Georgia from snogging him at a party ... ). But when the Sex God is never around and Dave the Laugh breaks up with Ellen, Georgia doesn't know what to think! Is she doomed to be a pop-star widow, or will she take her own bottom firmly in hand and blow her cosmic horn? And will her cat, Angus (the size of a small Labrador, only mad), ever get over the shame of having his trouser snake addendums snipped? As always, in Georgia's life, nothing ever turns out as planned!

By Elizabeth Kennedy, Madeline Davis

"Soars on the plain yet eloquent voices of the women...A necessary and overdue addition to the archives of lesbian and gay history."—The Boston Globe. Chronicles working-class lesbians in Buffalo, New York from the 1930s through the 60s.

By Isabelle Bonnet

Brings together a wealth of research and an expansive selection of photographs to create an enduring account of America's first-known trans network, Casa Susanna.

By Ed Sanders

Fug You is Ed Sanders's unapologetic and often hilarious account of eight key years of "total assault on the culture," to quote his novelist friend William S. Burroughs. Fug You traces the flowering years of New York's downtown bohemia in the sixties, starting with the marketing problems presented by publishing Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts, as it faced the aboveground's scrutiny, and leading to Sanders's arrest after a raid on his Peace Eye Bookstore. The memoir also traces the career of the Fugs -- formed in 1964 by Sanders and his neighbor, the legendary Tuli Kupferberg (called "the world's oldest living hippie" by Allen Ginsberg) -- as Sanders strives to find a home for this famous postmodern, innovative anarcho-folk-rock band in the world of record labels.

By Virginia Nicholson

"A feeling that we could do whatever we liked swept through us in the 60s..."The sexual revolution liberated a generation. But men most of all.We tend to think of the 60s as a decade sprinkled with stardust: a time of space travel and utopian dreams, but above all of sexual abandonment. When the pill was introduced on the NHS in 1961 it seemed, for the first time, that women - like men - could try without buying."It was paradise for men... all these willing girls..."But this book - by 'one of the great social historians of our time' - describes a turbulent power struggle.Here are the voices from the battleground. Meet dollybird Mavis, debutante Kristina, Beryl who sang with the Beatles, bunny girl Patsy, Christian student Anthea, industrial campaigner Mary and countercultural Caroline. From Carnaby Street to Merseyside, from mods to rockers, from white gloves to Black is Beautiful, their stories throw an unsparing spotlight on morals, four-letter words, faith, drugs, race, bomb culture and sex.This is a moving, shocking book about tearing up the world and starting again. It's about peace, love, psychedelia and strange pleasures, but it is also about misogyny, violation and discrimination - half a century before feminism rebranded. For out of the swamp of gropers and groupies, a movement was emerging, and discovering a new cause: equality.The 1960s: this was where it all began. Women would never be the same again.'One of the great social historians of our time. No one else makes makes history this fun' Amanda Foreman'Intimate, immersive, often moving, How Was It For You? subtly but powerfully subverts complacent male assumptions about a legendary decade' David Kynaston'An absorbing study of an extraordinary age. Beautifully written and intensively researched' Selina Hastings'Every baby boomer should read this great and wonderfully revelatory book if only to shout, "Ah yes, that's exactly what it was like for me!"' Anne Sebba'Virginia Nicholson is the outstanding recorder of British lives in the twentieth century... and this account of the 1960s is the most vivid and moving of all her works' Carmen Callil'Essential reading' Marina Lewycka'A dazzling kaleidoscope of facts, feelings and observations' Juliet Nicolson'A hugely ambitious, kaleidoscope of a book' Richard Vinen'Makes it feel like the Sixties have never been away' Hunter Davies'I was there, and she's right' Valerie Grove

By Kate Lister

Authored by one of the most original contemporary thinkers on the subject, this book is an enlightening illustrated cultural history of the sex trade that puts sex workers center stage, revealing how they have lived and worked all around the globe.The history of selling sex is a hidden one―and too often its practitioners are pushed to the margins of history. This book redresses the balance, revealing the history of the sex trade through the eyes of sex workers, from medieval streets to Wild West saloons, and from brothels to state bedrooms. These enthralling tales are brought to life by Whores of Yore creator Kate Lister’s witty and authoritative text, and illuminated by a rich archive of photographs, artworks, and objects offering insight into sex workers’ lives, challenging assumptions about this age-old trade.Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts’ chapters are structured thematically in a broadly chronological order, each one introducing a lively cast of complex and entertaining characters operating in an array of different periods, locations, and settings. In ancient Mesopotamia, the harlot Shamhat was powerful and respected, able to civilize the wild man Enkidu through her charms. In medieval London, Elizabeth Moryng serviced religious clergy under the guise of an embroidery business, though she was eventually jailed for being a prolific panderer and bawd. In the hedonistic floating world of Edo, Japan, Kabuki actresses and geishas entertained and pleasured their patrons. Lister’s engaging and illuminating tales invite readers to look, listen, and reconsider everything they thought they knew about the world’s oldest profession. Together, these captivating tales of sex workers from around the world and throughout history provide a powerful context to contemporary debates about sexuality and the empowerment of women. 500 illustrations